Strasbourg, 09/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - With the adoption last Thursday in Strasbourg of the report by Jean-Louis Bourlanges (UDF, France) on the statute of executive agencies responsible for certain management tasks with respect to Community programmes, the European Parliament approved the broad lines of the Commission's proposal but rejected an amendment by the rapporteur calling for a minimum percentage of 25% of officials to be allocated to senior posts in these agencies (see details in EUROPE of 22 June, p;13). During the debate, Commissioner Michaele Schreyer said she could not fix a minimum percentage of officials but that she did accept another request by the EP aimed at recruiting personnel from agencies according to renewable contracts.
The Parliament hopes the Commission will be legally responsible not only for the actions of these agencies but also for their budgetary execution. MEPs said they would not accept a separate discharge procedure for each agency. Finally, they hoped that an external assessment report would cover the first three years of each agency's functioning, to verify whether the statute proposed is suitable for externalising Community programmes and for allowing dysfunction to be corrected where necessary.